Thursday, August 25, 2011

Despite my cheery demeanour that most people in life see me in, I don't lack things that piss me.

I would like to say here that with less than two days before my planned departure to Paris (hotel and travel booked and paid for in advance in June), I still do not have a visa. Oh, of course, sarcastically do blame me for the following:
1. For not being able to get an initial visa appointment before September when the travel takes place in August and the requesting-for-appointment (complete with prepaid bookings) was initiated in late June.
2. For having a third-rate passport from a country that surely could care less about how its citizens are treated diplomatically.
3. For knowing sure as hell that a visa could be produced in less than an hour.
4. For knowing it really only took less than a few hours for the Schengen office to send the confirmation that I am not a security threat.
5. For having seen how in the consulate the dot matrix printer prints visas non-stop. It will print everyone else's visas, but not mine.

I have more than enough reason to be wound up for having to submit the same visa application twice for the upcoming trip, having to change travel plans twice, pay premiums for changing travel plans (even though it was really bureucratic inefficiencies that made me do it), paid first-night stay penalty for not turning up at the hotels I booked, and get angry for ending up being less productive at work.

If anyone wonders why there's no internationally recognised fashion designers hailing from Indonesia, well, amongst other things the diplomatic barriers to entry are enormous (I could probably devote a few posts on why the place just wasn't conducive enough, but that's not the point of this post.) They eat up a lot of time and concentration, and I scale them at least twice a year.

I am sick and tired of the bureucratic game. I do hope something gravely good comes out of the Eurozone crisis, like the break-up of Schengen travel areas - I mainly go to France anyway (plus, francs as a currency name sound better than €.) A gravely good alternative would be successful terrorists holding no-visa passports, which is an emerging security issue, but surely the knee-jerk reaction would be to grant even fewer visas for those already so much discriminated against. Schengen doesn't need to worry I fall into that category because I only have one passport anyway, and it's not a no-visa-required one; otherwise I would've spent the €60 fee on something more economically helpful.

Mr François Fillon and his June trip to Jakarta - well, bless the man and his jet-lag.

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learn v. 1. Acquire knowledge of or skill in (something) through study or experience or by being taught. 2. Become aware of by information or from observation. 3. Memorize. 4. archaic or informal teach.